


Snow Days

by KillHitlerAgain



Series: Stanuary 2019 [4]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: 1980s, Blizzards & Snowstorms, Canon Compliant, Comfort, Gen, Mullet Stan Pines, Pre-Canon, Stanuary, The comfort is mostly implied, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 07:41:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17618282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KillHitlerAgain/pseuds/KillHitlerAgain
Summary: A blizzard hits Gravity Falls and Stanley spends the week inside.Written for Stanuary 2019 - Week Four: Comfort





	Snow Days

**Author's Note:**

> I had a hard time figuring out what to write for week four, but with the polar vortex making everything in the Midwest very cold this week, I was inspired to write a story about Stan being very cold.
> 
> Of course, the story sort of changed while I was writing it, so it's relation to the theme is only sort of there. There's comfort, yeah, but it's mostly just implied.
> 
> Special thanks to GinAndShatteredDreams for beta-reading this for me.

 

 

> **GRAVITY FALLS WEATHER FORECAST**
> 
>         WEEK OF: JAN 23 83
> 
> SUN: 
> 
>         Heavy Snow | Hi 4/Lo -9
> 
> MON: 
> 
>         Partially Cloudy | Hi 10/Lo -7
> 
> TUE: 
> 
>         Cloudy | Hi 4/Lo -12
> 
> WED: 
> 
>         Sunny | Hi 13/Lo -2
> 
> THU: 
> 
>         Heavy Snow | Hi -1.5/Lo -26
> 
> FRI: 
> 
>         Heavy Snow | -14/Lo -30
> 
> SAT: 
> 
>         Cloudy | Hi -2/Lo -5

 

* * *

 

**Sunday, January 23rd, 1983**

 

    Stanley yawned, sitting up in bed and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He looked around the room. Why was it still dark? He slept too well for it to still be that early in the morning. He glanced over at the alarm clock and... there were no numbers on it. It wasn’t on.

 

He scrambled out of bed and grabbed his watch from on top of the dresser. It said the time was 12:38pm. Crap, he had stuff he had to do today, and he had already wasted a big chunk of it. He threw on some clothes and hurried down the stairs.

 

He flicked the light switch as he walked into the kitchen, but the light didn’t come on. He flicked the kitchen light switch a few more times, and the hallway light switch once, before he realized what was going on. The power was off.

 

He rubbed his face and sighed. Whatever, he didn’t need breakfast that bad. He could just go to the diner. Although, now that he thought about it, most people in town were probably getting out of church right around this time. So maybe that wouldn’t be that good of an idea.

 

Annoyed, he decided he’d just grab his keys and go. But as he opened the front door, he realized two things. One, why the power was out, and two, that maybe he should just stay inside. Not that he could probably even go outside if he wanted to.

 

* * *

 

**Monday, January 24th, 1983**

 

    The power was still out when he woke up that morning. It annoyed him, since it meant he couldn’t do any tours that day. He knew it didn’t matter, though, since no one would have showed up anyway. But at least if the power was on he could say he tried, and then he wouldn’t feel so bad about it.

 

And, if the power was on, he could actually take the time to work on the portal some more. As it was, the power being off meant he couldn’t even take the elevator downstairs to go look over the book some more. Leave it to his idiot brother to make the only way into the basement require the power to be on.

 

Eventually he decided that the best thing to do would be to try to work on some more attractions for the museum. The storm had stopped during the night, thankfully, and while he was still snowed inside, the sun barely peeking through the clouds gave him enough light that he could probably be at least a little productive that day.

 

So, around 10am, he descended the stairs into the kitchen to get to work on some taxidermy. He only worked for about a half an hour before it was so cold in the house he was starting to shiver. The house was terrible at keeping out the cold, he thought. It was like it was built and designed by someone with no architectural experience, and a teenager working for minimum wage (Which it was.) He went back up upstairs to steal some warm pajamas and a wool blanket from the box of Ford’s stuff he kept under his bed before coming back down to get back to work.

 

After that, about every hour or so he went to turn up the heat, and despite that, the house just kept getting colder. It wasn’t until the seventh time he got up that he actually bothered to look at what temperature the thermostat was set to. 90°F. It was then that he realized the heater was probably broken.

 

The heater was _most definitely_ broken.

 

* * *

 

**Tuesday, January 25th, 1983**

 

    Stanley was awoken that morning by the experience of being very, very cold. Even with Ford’s pajamas and three blankets around himself, he still felt like a popsicle. If he had to guess, he’d say that the temperature inside the house had just about evened out with the temperature outside, although, at least the indoors didn’t have any wind.

 

At least the food in the fridge hadn’t gone bad yet. Probably. It wasn’t moldy, so he got to work making breakfast. That was, of course, before he realized that if the heat was off, that meant the gas was off, and if the gas was off, he couldn’t turn on the stove. So, he just watched as the egg he cracked into the pan slowly froze over. Guess it was granola bars for breakfast again.

 

After he turned on the faucet to wash his hands, and the water immediately froze into an icicle, he decided that enough was enough. He had to turn the heat back on. So, after piling on every single piece of clothing he owned, he ventured out into the cold and snow to see what was wrong with the gas.

 

The snow was piled high on the ground, even higher than the porch. He slipped and fell over multiple times before he was finally able to crawl up on top of the snow drift. Standing up, he immediately sunk down to his waist. Great. Just what he wanted to happen.

 

He didn’t know how long it took him to get over to where the control for the gas was located on the side of the house, but he did fall just about ten times. He ended up having to use his hands to dig his way through the snow enough just to figure out what was wrong.

 

What he saw when he finally got it uncovered was probably what he should have expected. The entire thing was frozen over. That didn’t seem to be why it wasn’t working, though. Instead, it looked to be that some sort of lever had gotten lodged into the wrong position. Simple enough fix, he thought.  

 

He grabbed the lever and pulled. It didn’t budge. Alright, second time’s the charm. He rubbed his hands together in preparation to pull again. This time, it did budge, and he mentally cheered himself until he pulled away and realized there was still something in his hands. He looked down. It was the lever.

 

Was that a stack of firewood he saw on the porch?

 

* * *

 

**Wednesday, January 26th, 1983**

 

    By the time morning came that day, the small stack of firewood he had found on the porch was almost completely gone. It was probably his own fault for keeping both the fireplace and the furnace in his room lit all night, but it was so cold he couldn’t have thought straight if he wanted to.

 

Stan was sitting by the fire in the parlor, cooking what he liked to call “hobo breakfast” (Which was just a can of whatever was left in the house thrown into the fire and then dug out with tongs once it exploded.) As he was munching down on his can of green beans he went over what he had to do that day. His absolute number one priority was to get some more firewood. He would probably have enough to get himself through the rest of the day if he only ran the fireplace, but according to the newspaper he had dug out of the snow the other day it was only supposed to get colder and darker the rest of the week. Today, though, was moderately sunny and (relatively) warm, and was probably his best bet if he wanted to go cut down some trees without dying.

 

In preparation to go outside into the snow the second time that week, he broke two tennis rackets he found in the closet over his leg and duct taped them to his boots. Being waist high in the snow was okay when he was just going over to the side of the house, but he needed to drag a sled and an axe with him this time. So, homemade snowshoes it was.

 

He grabbed the rest of what he needed and headed out the door. The snow had compacted a bit since yesterday, and the sun head melted the top and created a thin layer of ice. He climbed back up on top of the snow, and, thankfully, he didn’t sink like a brick again. He looked over at the path he had made the day before. _Thankfully._

 

He marched through the wood for a bit before he found a tree that was small enough that he could easily cut it down and chop it up enough to carry it back with him. He grabbed the axe, and swung it once at the base of the tree. He heard a weird sound from up above him. He looked upwards, but didn’t see anything, so he got back to work. It was only after the tree had toppled and he started chopping it up enough to work with that he heard the sound again. And this time, it was right next to him.

 

He swung around and what he saw nearly knocked him out of his pants. It was a large goose, about five feet tall, with the plumage and wings of a snowy owl. And it did not look happy. At all. It screeched at him, and Stan took off running, completely forgetting about the firewood.

 

The weird creature chased him through the woods for about thirty minutes before it was finally satisfied that Stan wouldn’t bother it anymore, and then took off back into the forest. Stanley collapsed into the snow outside his house. It had been almost an hour since he left, and not only did he not have firewood, but both the sled and the axe were still in the forest.

 

He stood up and made his way to the porch. It was a different porch then the one he left on, but he had luckily brought his keys with him. As he approached the door, he noticed a large pile covered in a tarp buried under the snow. He grabbed the end and pulled.

 

Underneath was a pile of firewood, twice the size of the pile on the other porch. Some might say this was good luck. But he didn’t really feel very lucky.

 

* * *

 

**Thursday, January 27th, 1983**

 

    When he woke up that morning, Stan was really, really glad he had found that other firewood. It was so cold and was snowing so hard outside that the _inside_ of the windows were frozen over. If he hadn’t had the furnace going, he’d probably have ended up as one of those ice men they show off in museums. Except that instead of being dressed in animal fur and having died from a cool axe wound to the head, he’d be dressed in pajamas with rocket ships on them and have died from being completely inept at everything. He could see it now: “World’s Most Embarrassing Ice Man: Don’t Be Like This Guy!”. Hah, that’d make for a good attraction.

 

He wrapped himself in a blanket for good measure and mosied on down the stairs, lighting the fireplace before working his way into the kitchen to find something to eat. What he found first, though, was some sort of weird animal in a scarf and a top hat standing on his kitchen table and eating the cardboard part of a box of cereal.

 

For some reason, he found himself asking it what it was going here, which was of course met by silence and look towards him from some black beady eyes. _Really_ black, beady eyes. They were like coal and-

 

Oh. They _were_ coal.

 

He remembered reading about those things in one of the notebooks Ford left around the house. Apparently, not everything he saw he deemed important enough to go into his journal, which made Stan laugh considering from what he’d read, he treated his journal like a diary.

 

He walked over and grabbed the snowpossum from the table, and plopped it down in front of the door. He opened it to shoo the creature outside, but he was hit by a blast of wind, causing it to huddle behind his legs and start shivering. Sure, Stan wouldn’t go outside in this weather, but this was a snowman, right? It should like the cold. But after looking down and seeing it wrap its scarf tighter around itself, he sighed and shut the front door.

 

He didn’t care about the thing, obviously. He just didn’t want a dead animal on his front porch. He looked down at the snowpossum, which was staring up at him expectantly. It made him smile slightly.

 

He reached down to grab it, and it happily jumped up into his arms and snuggled itself close to his chest. It was soft, and surprisingly warm, despite still having the texture of snow. Huh, weird.

 

Stan carried the creature into the parlor, and sat it down on the armchair by the fire. After making sure it wasn’t going to run off to who knows where, he walked over to Ford’s study and started sifting through the papers, trying to find the notebook that he remembered reading about the snowpossum in.

 

After finally finding it, he went back into the parlor, to find the creature now laid out on the floor in front of the fire. He sat down in the armchair and opened up the notebook to read. Before he could start though, the snowpossum jumped up onto his lap and sat up, looking at the drawings on the paper.

 

Stan chuckled a bit. He was glad no one was around to see this. He started reading out loud.

 

 

 

> **SNOWPOSSUM**
> 
>  
> 
> An odd animal found in the forest of Gravity Falls, most commonly during the winter. When I first saw one on my lawn back in December, I had simply thought that a local child had built it out of snow. It wasn’t until I was sitting outside enjoying a cup of hot coffee that I saw it start to move!
> 
>  
> 
> The creature’s body seems to be almost entirely made out of heavily packed snow, except for it’s muzzle (The same color and texture as a carrot. Whether taste is the same is not yet known), and its tail (Seems to be made out of wood, but yet is still quite flexible.). Despite this, however, it keeps the same body temperature as a regular opossum, and seems to despise the cold. Is it simply a side-effect of us humans projecting expectations on creatures that are, by definition, unexpected? Or is it a cruel joke played by a merciless god?
> 
>  
> 
> Either way, it is quite cute. ~~My brother would probably like it.~~ Its favorite foods seem to be hot chocolate and Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. I have a theory that its life force comes from the top hat it wears on its head, but I have yet to test that hypothesis.

 

* * *

 

**Friday, January 28th, 1983**

 

    The storm had kept raging on through the night, and was still going strong when Stan woke up. He had fallen asleep in the armchair next to the fireplace, which had just recently gone out. The cold was probably what had awoken him.

 

He stood up, accidentally knocking the notebook he had been reading from the night before off of his lap. He went over and grabbed some wood from where he had set some yesterday, and threw it onto the pile of char. He ripped a blank page out of the notebook and set it alight with his lighter, throwing it into the fireplace and getting it going again.

 

He yawned and looked around the room. Where was that little creature from last night? It better not have been back in the kitchen stealing his food. Although, even if it was, it was probably just eating whatever was in the trash.

 

He shivered as he made his way across the floor. Even with the pajamas and the blanket, he was still freezing cold. When he walked into the kitchen, he looked out the window at the outdoor thermostat. The outside of it was completely frozen over, but at least the liquid inside was still, well, liquid. He couldn’t read the numbers on it, though.

 

The indoor thermometer he could read, and it said it was about 5 degrees inside. He was used to the cold, but that was just crazy. He was glad he was wearing two pairs of socks.

 

He opened the cupboard where there were still some cans of food left. He looked inside and what he saw was a single can of chili, and a huge wad of towels that he swore was not there yesterday. Out from the nest poked the head of the snowpossum. Of course. He probably left when the fire went out.

 

Stan grabbed the chili (and the snowpossum) and headed back into the parlor, where he threw the can into the fire. It was so cold he was thinking that it was about time he barricaded himself into his bedroom under a pile of blankets. He checked his watch. It was about 2pm (Geez, he slept late. He must not have gotten to bed till it was almost the next morning.) It was probably only going to get colder from then on out. Despite his body telling him to stay where it was warm, he reluctantly decided he needed to prepare a warm place for him to spend the night.

 

After he finished eating, he stood up and walked around the house, grabbing any blankets and pillows he could find. He carried them up into his bedroom and dropped them on the bed. He started a fire in the furnace to warm the room up while he went to grab some more stuff.

 

He grabbed an old towel from the linen closet and cut it into strips, and then grabbed a roll of duct tape. He used that to line the edges of his windows in an effort to keep out the cold air. For good measure, he grabbed another towel, and taped it across the window, trapping a pocket of air in between the outside and the rest of the room.

 

He went into the study and grabbed some books off the shelf to read. Most of the stuff on the shelf were too nerdy for him, but there were a few cheesy sci-fi and mystery novels that would keep his interest. Then, he reached under the shelf and pulled out the poorly-hidden box full of books and magazines that Ford probably didn’t want him to know he owned. He grabbed a couple of those, too.

 

Finally, he headed upstairs to the attic, to search through the bulk of the stuff he had saved for Ford and try to see if he couldn’t find a sweater and another pair of pajamas. At this point, he was really regretting just throwing the stuff into boxes and shoving them upstairs instead of actually bothering to organize them. He ended up pulling out box after box of stuff and going through them before he finally found what he was looking for.

 

As he was shoving everything back into place, a box from near the top of the pile got dislodged and tumbled to the floor, spilling its contents everywhere. Glass shattered onto the floor from a picture frame that had broken. Picking up the box, he noticed that it was covered in a lot more dust than everything else, and was smaller than the others, too. He looked up towards the top of the pile, and realized that it seemed not to fallen off from on top of the boxes, but instead had gotten knocked off the shelf above because of an old golf club he had shoved up there.

 

He reached down to start cleaning up the broken glass and put back what fell out. As he put the items into the box, he took some time to look each one over. The picture frame that had broken housed a photo of Ford and him as kids, smiling and waving happily at the camera. He grinned, taking the picture out of the broken frame and shoving it into his pocket.

 

The next was a little blue ribbon, with the words “New Jersey Junior Boxing Tournament Champion 1964” written across the top, and the name “Stanford Filbrick Pines” written across the bottom. He remembered that year. Pa was getting on his brother’s case for always being so bad at sports despite being the best at literally everything else, and Stan had offered to pretend to be him during the next local tournament. Well, it ended up being that Stan had won, which qualified him to go onto the state level. He took first place, and had even ended up going to regionals, but he was disqualified and both him and Ford were banned from ever participating in the tournament again when they realized what he had done. Their parents never found out, though, and the ribbon got Pa off Ford’s back and was displayed in the front room for the rest of their childhood. Stan wondered why he kept it in a box in the attic instead of with the rest of his trophies. Sure, he hadn’t actually won it, but it still had his name on it. No one would know the difference.

 

The last item that was in the box was a small, roughed up looking ball of some sort of fabric. He turned it over in his hands. Looking at the front, he realized what it was. It was a small, stuffed tiger. Not just any stuffed tiger, though. It was the toy his ma had given him as a baby. Ford had had a lion to match it. When they were around eight years old, their pa had insisted that were now too old to still be sleeping with stuffed animals, and made them give them up. His brother hadn’t been too broken up over it, but Stan got pretty mad. After they had gone to bed that night Stan had snuck into his parents’ room and grabbed the toy. He had given it to Ford and asked him to hide it and keep it safe.

 

Stan had sort of assumed his brother had just held onto it for a little while before losing it. He couldn’t believe that, no, he actually kept it, even after they got into a fight and Ford left the house. Why would he do that?

 

He stood up and held the old toy in his hands for a moment, before stuffing it into his other pocket.

 

When he got back down into his room, he saw that the snowpossum had already fallen asleep on his bed. He shuffled in slowly and shut the door. He threw some more wood into the furnace before changing into the warmer clothes and grabbing a book to read. He slid under the covers and bunched the blankets up around himself. He reached into the drawer on his bedside table for a flashlight. Before he relaxed, though, he reached into the pocket of his discarded pants and pulled something out, setting it next to him on the pillow.

 

He stayed there until he fell asleep.

 

* * *

 

**Saturday, January 29th, 1983**

 

    Stanley was awoken the next day by a loud knocking on the front door. Initially, he tried to just ignore it. But after a while, he heard the door open, and someone yell into the house.

 

    “Hey? Anyone there?”

 

He leaned up in bed and rubbed his eyes. What kind of person just opens up someone’s door when they don’t get an answer? The kind of weirdos that lived in Gravity Falls, apparently. They didn’t understand the meaning of “privacy”.

 

He slid out of bed and headed down the hall to give the visitor a piece of his mind. As he was walking, though, he realized something. The door was completely blocked by snow yesterday. How was anyone here?

 

He tumbled down the stairs and was met by the sight of a man standing in an open door. He looked familiar. He was his neighbor, wasn’t he? Dan, right? That was his name?

 

Dan looked at him and shook his head.

 

    “The power’s been out for a week!”

 

Stan rolled his eyes.

 

    “Yeah, I know that.”

 

    “I have experience living in these woods, so I was fine. But I needed to make sure the weaker people were safe, so I cleared a path to your house.”

 

Stan’s face scrunched up the insinuation that he couldn’t handle himself in the cold. How old was this guy, 20? He’d been dealing with stuff worse than this since this guy was in elementary school. He was thankful for the path, though. He didn’t have any food left in the house and he really needed to go to the store.

 

    “Gee, thanks. Not like I couldn’t have handled that myself.”

 

Stan was ready to shoo the guy off when he stopped and thought. Even with the path, his car probably wouldn’t fare well in this weather. He sighed.

 

    “But, uh, if you want…”

 

Stan rubbed the back of his neck,

 

    “You could give me a ride to the store. ...And see if you can’t turn my gas back on.”

 

Dan narrowed his eyes at him.

 

    “I guess I can do that. You and your rat go hop in the truck while I go take a look.”

 

The snowpossum sneered at the lumberjack from where it sat on Stan’s shoulder. He was about to tell him that the lever on the control was broken, but he had already started heading towards the side of the house by the time he thought of it.

 

Stan threw on a coat and some boots. Normally, he would have thrown on some actual clothes, but he was currently well past the point of caring what he looked like. He just wanted some food and the heat turned back on.

 

He headed out towards the truck and hopped into the passenger seat. A few minutes later, Dan returned and climbed in.

 

    “Oh, uh, yeah.”

 

Stan started,

 

    “I forgot to mention that the lever was broken.”

 

He turned towards him. Despite what he had first assumed when he came marching back to the truck, Dan didn’t actually look frustrated at all.

 

    “Don’t worry about that. I got it turned back on real quick.”

 

Stan looked puzzled. It was completely frozen over last time he checked. How’d he get it on so quickly? He didn’t even have any tools.

 

    “How’d you get it turned back on so fast?”

 

Dan shrugged.

 

    “I punched it. How else would I have fixed it?”

 

Well, if it was that simple, Stan could have just fixed it himself. Why didn’t he try punching it? That’s always his first solution to his problems! Although, now that he thought about it, it might not have even worked. The people of this town seemed to have the uncanny ability to stupid themselves to victory.

 

Whatever, he thought. At least the heat was back on now. And, he was getting a ride to the store. He didn’t have any money, but who cared! He’d just shoplift the groceries. And maybe some hot chocolate.

 

Definitely some hot chocolate. And the softest blanket they had in the home and garden section.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This story was supposed to only be around 1,500 words. As you can see, it far surpassed that. Which is why it's late.


End file.
